


Happy For You

by theramblinrose



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Caryl, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23688046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theramblinrose/pseuds/theramblinrose
Summary: Caryl, oneshot.  They would both be happy, if they could be sure that the other found happiness.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier
Kudos: 24





	Happy For You

AN: I meant for this to just be a little drabble, but it turned into a one shot. 

There is discussion of Carol’s relationship with Tobin. 

I own nothing from the Walking Dead.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! 

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“Honestly, I guess I thought that—if anyone would be? You’d be happy for me,” Carol said. 

Daryl shrugged his shoulders. He nipped at the cuticle on his thumb. He took a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, and he lit it—ignoring all the while that his hands were shaking. It was unlikely that she’d noticed it in the darkness that surrounded them, especially when she was wrapped up in her own thoughts.

She was sitting on the steps outside of Tobin’s house. It was her house now, too, Daryl supposed. At least that’s what he was hearing. That’s what she was telling him. She’d dropped it on him like the U.S.A. had dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. And, as far as Daryl’s heart and nervous system were concerned, it had done just as much damage.

“The hell does that even mean?” Daryl asked. “You’re together.” 

“It means—we’re together,” Carol said, lighting her own cigarette. “You know, we’re…”

“Fuckin’?” Daryl asked. His stomach churned, and he wished that he could pretend he’d eaten something horrible for dinner. 

“Not that it’s anybody’s business, but…yeah,” Carol said. 

“So fuckin’ is fuckin’,” Daryl said. “It don’t require some big—some big declaration, Carol. It don’t require movin’ in. Not if that’s all the hell it is.” He hesitated a moment. He chewed furiously at the loose piece of skin his teeth had detected and chosen as their target. Each time he bit at the skin, his thumb hurt, but he preferred that hurt to the one he felt in his chest. Physical hurt, at least, he knew he could handle. He knew he could survive physical hurt.

He wasn’t so sure about surviving this. 

“Is it just fuckin’?” He asked after a moment, barely able to find his own words.

“Why do you care, so much, about…if it’s just fucking or not, Daryl?” Carol asked. 

Daryl shrugged his shoulders again. She probably couldn’t see him too much clearer than he could see her. Not at this distance. He’d had to stand up, though. He couldn’t keep sitting there with her, on the steps, once the bomb had landed.

“Because there’s a big difference, Carol, between just fuckin’ and love,” Daryl said. “Do you—love him?” 

Carol blew out air rather loudly. She exhaled from her own cigarette, but this was far more than exhaling smoke from a drag. 

“No,” she said, finally, keeping her voice low.

“Then, why?” Daryl asked. “Why—be together with him, or whatever?”

“Because I’m lonely,” Carol said. 

“I’m lonely too,” Daryl said. “Doesn’t mean I’m—movin’ in with any damn body I can find that’s got the space for it.” 

Carol laughed to herself. It was insincere.

“Because I’ll never get what I want,” Carol said. She laughed to herself again. “Never,” she added, her voice fading out almost entirely before she finished the word. 

“Know that feelin’ too,” Daryl said. He walked a couple of paces. He took the last long drags off the cigarette that it allowed him to take before it burned out. He stomped the butt of the cigarette. He took his time focusing on each event in the silence of the night. 

He almost felt like, if he rushed things, and ended the conversation too soon, then she’d get up and go inside. She’d leave him to go into Tobin’s house. 

And even though he knew it wasn’t true, and even though it wasn’t even a rational thought, he felt like he’d never see her again if she did that. 

At least, he’d never see her like he had seen her. He’d never see her as she really was. She would do her best to match Tobin. She would do her best chameleon act to turn herself into something that Tobin would like. She would try to blend with him until she became almost indistinguishable from her plaid-clad Dollar-Tree-Mountain-Man boyfriend. She would disappear, for the most part, as herself.

Daryl loved her. And he loved her as herself. He loved her as the chameleon that she could be when she realized that someone was looking and expected something of her, and he loved her for her true form – what she became when she thought no one was watching. He had absolutely no delusions that she was perfect, but he loved her imperfections as much as he loved air and water.

If she told him she loved Tobin, he would be happy for her. If she told him that she wanted a life with Tobin—really wanted it—then she would begin it with his blessing. If he could feel that she was as happy with Tobin as she’d ever been, he would have offered, himself, to walk her to the altar of their wedding.

She’d said it herself, though. Tobin wasn’t what she wanted. And she deserved everything she really wanted. 

“What do you want?” Daryl asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Carol said. 

“Does to me,” Daryl said. 

She was quiet a moment. Her voice was slightly higher pitched when she spoke again. It gave Daryl the feeling like she might have been fighting back tears. Maybe, in the darkness, there were even a few on her cheeks that he couldn’t see.

“You mean that?” She asked.

“I do,” Daryl said. “Always have.” 

Carol laughed to herself. She hummed, and the hum turned into more of a groan. Her cigarette disappeared as she put it out, leaving her as nothing but a darker silhouette among a backdrop of darkness. 

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It’ll never happen. If it was going to, it would have happened by now.” 

Daryl’s stomach twisted at her words, without reason and without his brain offering him any explanation. He felt pulled to her, like something was tugging him back to the steps that he’d run away from when the thought of her with Tobin had hit him like an anvil to the face. 

“I know that feeling,” Daryl offered quietly. “Like I’m never gonna get what I want. Hurts. And it’s heavy.” 

He sat down on the steps next to Carol. She slid closer to him. He could feel the warmth of her body at his side. She sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder, affectionately. He wondered if she could hear his heart pounding. If she noticed his breathing growing heavier. He wondered if she could feel the tremors that made his hands shake as they ran through his body.

“I want you to have everything you want,” Carol said. “It would make me very happy if…if I could know that you had everything you wanted.” 

“You mean that?” Daryl asked. 

Carol shifted around. She rubbed her face against his shoulder. She snuggled into him.

“I do,” she said. 

“I think—if you really meant that,” Daryl said, willing himself to keep his breath mostly steady and praying that he didn’t pass out or lose his nerve at the moment when he needed it most, “you could—make it so that it happened.” 

Carol sat up and looked at him. 

“I could make it so that you had everything you wanted?” Carol asked. 

“Mmmm hmmmm,” Daryl hummed, unable to find more than that to offer her. He sucked in a breath through his nose. His heart was pounding like he was running from a bear, and not at all like he was sitting on some steps, in the quiet darkness of the night, with the woman he’d loved for years.

“How?” Carol asked.

“By—goin’ in there just long enough to get whatever the hell you brought with you,” Daryl said. 

“You hate him that much?” Carol asked with a laugh.

“No,” Daryl said. “I don’t hate him at all. I just—wish you was goin’ back to my house to stay. That’s all. With me.” 

Carol was quiet for a moment.

“Do you mean—what I think you mean?” Carol asked.

Something surged up in Daryl. It was an urgency boiling around in his gut. He felt on the cusp of something, but he had to figure out how to tip things over the edge.

“Damn it, Carol,” Daryl said, “I’m not good with words and shit—maybe that’s why you’re sittin’ here on these steps instead of seven houses down. But I’m tryin’ now. You asked me what I wanted. Said you wanted me to have it. I told you what it was. Now, I guess it’s up to you to decide—if you meant what you said. I understand—whatever it is. Maybe I don’t understand…but I will. I’ll understand whatever you want me to understand. But—if you’re just going to settle for him to not be lonely? I wish to hell you’d—settle for not bein’ lonely with me, instead.” 

Carol breathed out. In the darkness, with his eyes as adjusted as they were ever going to get, Daryl could make out very little of her face, but he felt like she was smiling. He felt like he could hear her smile. He could definitely hear her smile when she spoke.

“I can’t do that, Daryl,” she said. Daryl tried not to collapse under the weight of the sinking feeling. She continued almost immediately. “I can’t settle for you because—you’re all that I’ve wanted. You’re—what I’ve been waiting for.” 

“What?” Daryl asked. He felt like he’d been hit as hard by those words as he’d been hit by any of the others. They came hard, fast, and out of left field. 

“I love you, you asshole,” Carol growled. She laughed quietly. “And the only reason I—I ever came here to…to sit on these steps, is because I figured you wanted something else.” 

“Why would you think that?” Daryl asked. 

“It’s been…years,” Carol said. “I’ve been waiting on you. You’ve never taken me seriously, though.” 

“I always thought you were joking,” Daryl admitted. “What the hell could you want with me?” 

“Everything,” Carol said. “God—I’ve wanted everything with you.” 

Daryl’s stomach felt like it did some backflips inside of him. His heart, too, fluttered like it was trying to take flight. 

“I—I want you,” Daryl said. “Everything…everything about you.”

“I want to kiss you,” Carol said. Daryl answered her by leaning forward and offering her the kiss she wanted. It was a sweet kiss. A good kiss. He liked it and, more than that, he liked the promise that he practically tasted in the kiss. There was more to come. The best, perhaps, was really yet to come in this life. “What do you want?” Carol asked, nipping his bottom lip. She laughed quietly and low in her throat. There were so many possible answers to that question, but there were some that were more urgent than others.

“More’n anything, right now I want you to—go and get your shit, Carol,” Daryl said. “And—when you come out that door? I want you to promise me that…whether it’s seven houses down or the fuckin’ dark side of the moon, I want you to promise me that you don’t go no damn where without me, and I don’t go nowhere without you.” 

Carol touched his face. She ran her fingers across his cheek. He sucked in a breath, catching a whiff of her smell. It was a smell that, soon, he knew would be wrapped around him. It was a smell that he would smell until the day he died. 

It was comfortable, and it was home—the best kind of home.

“Promise,” Carol said, sincerely. She got up, without another word, and headed into the house. Daryl waited for her, determined to be as patient as he needed to be. He sat there for a long time, but he wasn’t going to rush things. Tobin wasn’t his favorite person, but he deserved to at least be let down however gently she was going to let him down. No matter what she did, though, it would feel like being pushed down a flight of stairs. Daryl was sure of that. There was no way that losing her, if you believed you had her, wouldn’t hurt.

Daryl almost felt bad for Tobin. Almost.

He had her, though, and he wasn’t going to lose her. He was sure of that when she came out of the house and practically skipped down the porch steps with her bag over her shoulder—lighter than he’d seen her since the prison. When she passed him her bag, and he dropped an arm over her, she snuggled into him as they walked. 

He didn’t ask her about Tobin. It didn’t matter, and she’d share if she wanted to. 

Carol had asked him to come out of his house, that night, and to meet with her because she wanted to tell him something. She’d wanted a response from him. She’d had one, perhaps, in mind. She spoke to that concern, again, as they neared the house, seven houses down from the one where they began their walk, that they would call home—at least for now.

“I’m happy, Daryl,” Carol offered. She laughed to herself. “Are you happy for me?” 

“I’m happy for you,” Daryl ceded. “But the damn truth of the matter is, I think I’m even happier for me.”


End file.
